Nine years into it – including the tumultuous current term, during which his name has been dragged through the mud from Abitibi to the Gaspé coast – Jean Charest could easily find something less daunting to do than be Quebec premier.

Ask anyone: There is no more difficult job in the province.

There have been rumours of an international role or maybe something in the diplomatic field.

But to imagine Charest leaving now – under a cloud of dissatisfaction and allegations of corruption – is to not understand the man or the forces that drive him.

Pride enters into it. So do ego and the desire to leave with a clean record.

Charest happens to love to prove people are wrong about him – especially the current school of thought, which says Quebec’s 39th premier is washed up.

How can anyone like Charest resist the possibility of writing a page in Quebec’s history by becoming the first premier since Maurice Duplessis to win a fourth term?

His decision Wednesday to send Quebec into a rare summer election on Sept. 4, the day after Labour Day, is typical of Charest’s “fight them on the beaches” mentality.

Le Devoir’s website did, in fact, declare Charest physically dead last year, opening a field of jokes for Charest – who, in private, gives as good as it gets as a stand-up comic.

“I think it’s just part of political life, frankly,” Charest told The Gazette in June as new rumours about his political demise surfaced. “I take it all in stride.

“It’s probably inevitable that, from time to time, that kind of speculation will happen.”

Still, his reason for running again may appear puzzling to some.

Not to the premier.

“It’s perhaps because he has been a politician all his life and has nowhere else to go,” ventures Antonia Maoini, an associate political science professor at McGill University.

“He’s a political beast,” adds Université de Sherbrooke political scientist Jean-Herman Guay, who has made a career of studying Sherbrooke-born Charest’s triumphs and pratfalls.

“He’s someone who’s done only this (politics),” Guay says, noting Charest’s role is eased by the fact the Liberal Party is not built to allow anyone to challenge his leadership.

And so Quebecers are off to the polls and Charest, a natural-born campaigner, is trying to position his party on the offensive as opposed to what it has appeared to be for months: a worn-out monster about to die the death of 1,000 cuts, as the Parti Québécois did in 2003 under Bernard Landry.

Wednesday, as election campaign buses for the Liberals, PQ and Coalition Avenir Québec purred on the streets surrounding the National Assembly in Quebec City, few people were making predictions about how the vote will turn out.

The New Democratic Party landslide across Quebec in the most recent federal election means plenty of political pundits are keeping their power dry this time around.

“It’s too close, too volatile,” Guay says.

Maoini concurs, writing recently that this campaign is – for now – too close to call.

There are many reasons. Voters are enjoying summer vacation and have tuned out, so it’s hard to get an idea what’s on their minds.

But we have seen, especially in the recent Liberal loss in the by-election in Argenteuil, that Quebecers are in dark mood, ready to kick anybody who strikes their fancy.

Another issue — especially for downtown Montrealers — is more structural. Despite the clanging of the pots and pans by protesters in Montreal, Quebec elections are won and lost in the regions, and nobody is clanging there.

Given the Liberals’ stranglehold on the anglophone and allophone votes in Montreal, the party kicks off any campaign with about 35 ridings already more or less in the bag.

Liberal campaign caravans don’t even bother with stops in the West Island. All the party needs is another 30 to form a majority government.

That’s why it’s all-out war outside Montreal – particularly in the Quebec City area and in places like Trois Rivières and Laval. Rich in francophone voters, these are the ridings that make or break the big parties because they swing, often coming up on the side that forms the government.

That explains why those regions have all been showered with millions of dollars in government money over the last few weeks.

But winning an election – even with a running start, as the Liberals have – is not an easy thing to do.

Topping the list of obstacles is Quebecers’ desire for change, the same force that ousted the PQ after nine years in office, in the 2003 campaign where the Liberals made “change” the central plank in their platform.

Make note of that number nine, though. The bad news for the Liberals is that “nine” has taken on the status of a curse in Quebec political lore, as La Presse columnist Vincent Marissal recently noted.

Since 1976, no government, Liberal or PQ, has survived beyond its ninth year in office.

Quebecers have made it a habit to “throw the bums out” every nine years and give the others a chance.

Not even the PQ’s usual promise to put sovereignty first, if elected, deters voters who, in their wisdom, differentiate between voting in a government and voting to secede from Canada.

The last government to endure more than nine years was Duplessis’s Union Nationale regime, which was in power 16 years, from 1944 to 1960.

No matter how you cut it, the Liberal government is old. Charest has been in the premier’s chair since 2003. He now is three years and eight months into his third mandate.

The Liberals are running under a “Pour le Québec,” slogan while TVA reported Tuesday that the PQ’s campaign slogan will be “À nous de choisir.”

As well, all three parties have trotted out new faces as candidates.

The themes are pretty clear, too.

For the past few days, Charest has been portraying the Liberals as stable and responsible, faced with what he says are dark clouds on the economic front.

And Guay notes the student protests, symbolized by the red square, came along at just the right moment for Charest because they allowed him to rebrand himself as the law and order premier, which is much easier to digest than the tag of “old and corrupt.”

“He’s order vs. disorder,” Guay sayas.

Charest will spend the next four weeks pounding away at PQ leader Pauline Marois (who wore the red square and banged pots with the best of them), portraying her as incarnating the street chaos and, of course, a sovereignty referendum – which means the Liberals will be able to rally their traditional federalist vote.

Marois, who was ready to kick off her campaign even before Charest announced the vote, has her own game plan, which will be to talk about the Liberal government’s past, its ethical record, and the scandal over the way daycare permits were handed out.

CAQ leader François Legault remains the wild card. In his first campaign as leader, his problem will be keeping on message. His diverse array of candidates might have the crazy idea they can speak their minds, too, which is always a problem for a party leader.

Legault discovered in the Argenteuil by-election how little his party is known to Quebecers, and had to campaign all July in a bid to catch up.

On the other hand, he’s expected to do well in some ridings held by the old Action démocratique du Québec. Various theories are floating about the possibility he could hold the balance of power in either a Liberal or PQ minority government.

“Do they (the Liberals) have a chance? Yes,” Guay says. “Can the PQ believe in a win? Yes, too.”

As for Québec solidaire and Option nationale, anything is possible. Quebec solidaire has, however, failed to garner more than four per cent of the vote in the last two general elections.

The stakes are very high for Charest and Marois at a personal level, too.

Beaten, Charest would almost certainly have to resign. If elected as the head of a minority government, he might be able to govern a while longer and then move on with dignity.

The same goes for Marois. On her second campaign as leader, and against an unpopular Charest, it’s doubtful the PQ hawks would allow her to stick around long if she lost the election.

And even if she took power, she would have to make plenty of room for ambitious up-and-comers like Bernard Drainville and Pierre Duchesne.

pauthier@montrealgazette.com

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